


Strike

by luna_plath



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aurors, Drabble, M/M, One Shot, Post - Deathly Hallows, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash, Snape Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 02:03:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2091669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna_plath/pseuds/luna_plath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His years without Voldemort, Dumbledore, or Snape have left him simultaneously listless and paranoid, waiting for the day when one of them will stroll back into his life and derail all of the progress he’s made, all the boredom he’s amassed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strike

The robed figure scrambling over long, dewy grass and muddied hillsides falls at the casting of Harry’s spell. He hears a litany of curses ring across the unfamiliar landscape, but the sound, the _voice_ that projects it sparks a pang of awareness in his spine. Bounding over to his capture, Harry turns the man over with his boot, wrenches him to a sitting position, and gasps.

“Potter,” the man says, more astounded than afraid, his shock apparent in his voice.

“ _Snape?_ You can’t be—there’s no way—“

A scowl, sharp and characteristic, shapes his features. “Don’t be so presumptuous. Of course there’s a way. Several, in fact, which I’d be delighted to tell you about if you would kindly release me.”

If Harry was in doubt over his captive’s identity he was certainly more inclined to believe him now. However, his most basic training with the aurors has made him wary of impostors, and considering he’d watched Snape bloody _die_ right in front of him, he has a right to be overcautious.

“What form does your patronus take?” Harry asks, wand pointed at the man he’s known going on ten years now.

“A doe,” he replies, his trademark black hair falling unevenly into his eyes.

Harry releases him.

“Why have I never heard from you?” he questions, as if he has a right to know, as if he is someone that Snape would go to with that kind of information.

It’s forward of him, to say the least, but there’s a tight, painful part of Harry that desperately wants to be one of those informed people. His years without Voldemort, Dumbledore, or Snape have left him simultaneously listless and paranoid, waiting for the day when one of them will stroll back into his life and derail all of the progress he’s made, all the boredom he’s amassed.

There must be something in his eyes that Snape can’t ignore, because instead of debasing him with his silky threats or dry wit, he delivers a legitimate answer.

“I thought that contacting you—or even reemerging within the wizarding world—would just make the rebuilding process more difficult…for everyone. Including me.”

“Make a clean break of it. I see,” Harry says, rationalizing through his feelings, through the unnamed tingling in his gut that isn’t anger or sadness or any simple emotion, but something different entirely.

Snape sighs and suddenly he looks all of his ragged years. “Was I wrong to think so?”

“No,” he replies without pause. “I’m just a little surprised to run into someone I believed to be dead in the middle of nowhere in Scotland while I’m supposed to be working.”

His words come out more biting than he’d planned, but his former professor doesn’t seem to take note of it. One thing Harry prided himself on was getting a firmer grip on his temper after the war, but all it takes is one exchange with a man he’s come to idolize and all that preparation comes rattling down at his feet.

Typical.

It’s the middle of the night on the deserted Scottish moors and with every shift in the moonlight Snape is reminding Harry increasingly of Sirius when he first got out of Azkaban and Remus when he first came home from Fenrir and the other wolves. It occurs to Harry that perhaps he isn’t the only one who feels like he’s on the outside of an inside joke.

“You should come inside,” he offers, jerking his shoulder in the direction of the single lamp he’d abandoned outside the wards of his campsite.

“Really. Not to be rude, but you look like shit.”

“You’re as eloquent as ever, Potter.”

Snape’s words come across as weary rather than biting, and instead of haughtily storming away, he follows Harry down the muddy slope, squaring his shoulders against the strike of the northern wind.


End file.
